Steven Saus injects people with radioactivity as his day job, but only to serve the forces of good. His work has appeared in multiple anthologies and magazines both online and off. He also publishes as Alliteration Ink. You can find him at stevensaus.com and alliterationink.com.

Published

Why I’m Not Converting to ePub version 3

I was preparing a talk on selling your work digitally that I’ll present at the Origins Game Fair, when I realized that I am still firmly using ePub version 2 instead of version 3. There’s not a lot of differences between the two, but they exist.

So I looked into it somewhat… and quickly realized that for those of us writing novels, short stories, anthologies – basically text-based works – that the drawbacks and learning curve aren’t worth it.

The whole point of using a real eBook format instead of PDF is so that the text can fit the screen – because you don’t know what font size or even what kind of device the person is going to be reading on. They could be reading it on a PC, on a phone (of different resolutions), an eInk reader, or tablet. And I want that reading experience to be roughly the same across platforms. Or to put it another way:

The presentation of the text may enhance the work, but must never distract from the work

I’ve pointed this out a few different times – the example showing how drop caps can completely bork your work is a good one – and that philosophy underpins why I’m not using ePub version 3. I don’t know what my readers are using, and I want to ensure that it renders the same across devices.